Carrot and Stick (for Jeff Chiplis) by Daniel Thompson
foto by smith   ©chiplis

Carrot and Stick
for Jeff Chiplis

Carrot and Stick worked together for years. One night Carrot dreamt he was
Stick. Stick heard about it and that sent him off imagining, what if everything
sticky in the world were carroty? If I didn't drive carrot shift, would I walk?
And if I walked way out in the carrots and it got dark and I started talking to
myself, would I speak softly and carry a big carrot or merely an ordinary walking
carrot? And if some carroty-fingered character came up to me and asked for a
carrot of gum, all the while eyeing my carrot pin, or if he just flat out said,
This is a carrot up, would I carrot around, would I carrot my neck out and tell
him to carrot it in his ear, then take my big carrot or maybe even my ordinary
walking carrot and play carrot ball with his head? O sometimes life is a carrot of
candy and sometimes it's a carrot of dynamite! But you gotta have carrot-to-itiveness.
You can't be a carrot-in-the-mud all your life but then again you don't wanna carro
out like a sore thumb even if you are playing the licorice carrot. Yes, you've gotta
carrot with it, at it, together, never forgetting carrots and stones may break bones
but -- but all this carroty business got Stick hungry and shaped his dreaming. Now he
was in his favorite restaurant with his favorite waitron, wanting something good to
carrot to his ribs, but everything was different. His waitron was stick-topped and
wore a 14-stick golden earring. The menu read peas and sticks, stick juice, and
stick cake. Stick felt he might be getting the short end of the carrot, the dirty
end. He was angry and hungry and every other word ending in -gry. And he came out
of his imagination and blamed it all on Carrot. Carrot, he said, why are you doing
this? Don't you carrot all for me? Carrot looked up and thought, Sometimes life is
a stick of candy and sometimes it's a stick of dynamite? But what he said was, Stick...
stick it. Carrot and Stick still work together but lately they've been keeping day-
dreams and night dreams out of the conversation.

Daniel

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